Rome and Carthage: Figuring the Anglo-Dutch Wars

Facing each other across a contested sea, England and the Dutch Republic fought three wars at mid-century, just as Rome and Carthage fought the three Punic Wars across the Mediterranean two millennia before. English and Dutch writers frequently represented their conflicts as new Punic Wars. In these twenty years without a stadholder, the Dutch could easily represent themselves as Rome to a Carthaginian England. Although the trope served the regicidal English well in the 1650s, the guise of the Roman Republic fit a restored English monarchy less easily in the second and third wars with the Dutch. English attempts to deploy the Punic Wars as a trope in the midst of the failures and weaknesses of these latter wars illustrate their evolving view of monarchy.